TX GOP wants to punish you dearly for hiring 'illegals,' unless of course they're maids or gardeners, cuz Republicans need their perks

A wee bit hypocritical, and actually almost funny. Basically they're being forced to acknowledge the useful purpose a lot of undocumented aliens serve in our economy.

Amid a number of bills filed in Texas that address the issue of illegal immigration, one, proposed by Republican state Rep. Debbie Riddle, stands out.

As proposed, House Bill 1202 would create tough state punishments for those who "intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly" hire an unauthorized immigrant. Violators could face up to two years in jail and a fine of up to $10,000.

But it is an exception included in the bill that is drawing attention. Those who hire unauthorized immigrants would be in violation of the law -- unless they are hiring a maid, a lawn caretaker or another houseworker.

Read the rest of this post...

Will Sam Arora side with known hate groups?

I'm always amazed when good Democrats go bad. There's something that happens after they're elected to office that turns them into these horrendously equivocating human beings that simply can't keep their promises, even when to do so would be easy.

To wit: Maryland Delegate Sam Arora.

Sam worked for Hillary. He worked at the DNC. He represents one of the most liberal districts in already-pretty-liberal Maryland. So you'd think that Sam, who was already vocally in favor of marriage equality (aka gay marriage) during his recent campaign would be just as supportive now that he's in office.

Not so much.

You see, Sam, who was even a sponsor of the marriage equality legislation in Maryland that is coming up for a crucial vote and could actually pass this year, has suddenly decided that he's not so sure he's for civil rights any more. He's now pulling the old "I'll vote the bill out of committee but I'm not so sure I'll vote for it on the floor" bs that we get from the Joe Lieberman's of the world on their best days.

That's a load of bull, Sam.  You promised to support marriage equality in exchange for our votes and our money.  A lot of my friends helped your campaign (his campaign donor list reads like a who's-who of DC progressive politics).  And now, for God knows what reason, you've suddenly gotten the willies and are considering siding with the known hate groups that have invaded the state.

Again, the guy represents one of the most liberal districts in the state.

All we want is for Sam to keep his promise.  It's hard for me to imagine what Sam's donors will say if they find out he's ended up siding with known hate groups.  Actually, it's not that hard at all.  I've been talking to a number of his donors, and am going through the list to see who else I know (as are my friends).  We'll be publishing that list, and asking you to contact his top donors, if Sam betrays us after having promised to be our champion.  And I doubt any big-name Democrat is going to want to be associated with an enemy of civil rights ever again.

Joe has much more about this problem has become Sam Arora over on AMERICAblog Gay.  If Arora goes south, and betrays us, representing a liberal district, you can bet he'll take other "good" Democrats with him.  Please contact Sam Arora and ask him to keep his promises.

Twitter: @Sam_Arora
FACEBOOK: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sam-Arora/334183772314
(410) 841-3528, (301) 858-3528
1-800-492-7122, ext. 3528 (toll free)
e-mail: sam.arora@house.state.md.us
fax: (410) 841-3011, (410) 841-3528, (301) 858-3528, (240) 245-0018 Read the rest of this post...

FOX uses footage from CA to suggest that WI protests are violent

Only at FOX. Brian Beutler has more. Check out the final seconds of O'Reilly, and the violent protests in "Wisconsin", PALM TREES AND ALL.

Read the rest of this post...

Huckabee criticizes Obama for growing up near madrassas, which is funny since Huck grew up in a Klan state

He really is a bigoted ass. Playing the birther card and the race, and religion, card all simultaneously. Huck today:

And I have said many times, publicly, that I do think he has a different worldview and I think it is, in part, molded out of a very different experience. Most of us grew up going to Boy Scout meetings and, you know, our communities were filled with Rotary Clubs, not madrassas.

With all due respect to Arkansans, Huckabee's worldview, as compared to those of us who grew up in the north, was growing up in communities filled with the Ku Klux Klan.

In Arkansas and elsewhere, the Klan opposed bootleggers, and in 1922, two hundred Klan members set fire to saloons in Union County. The national Klan office was finally established in Dallas, Texas, but Little Rock, Arkansas was the home of the Women of the Ku Klux Klan. The first head of this auxiliary was a former president of the Arkansas WCTU.

If the man is going to throw stones, let's throw stones.

And exactly what part of Huckabee's worldview made him soft on rape? Read the rest of this post...

Obama DOJ wants to give Bush-era anti-gay criminal Scott Bloch a 'Get Out of Jail Free' card

That headline is literally true.

First the background — If you recall, Scott Bloch was part of the Bush DOJ as head of the Office of Special Council:

The 1978 Civil Service Reform Act created the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), an office mandated to protect whistleblowers from reprisal and prosecute managers for retaliation.

If you're a Republican, that's where you put the guy who hates whistleblowers. Enter Scott Bloch:

[Scott] Bloch has been a lightning rod for controversy since he took the position, his first major actions as head of the office were to choose as deputy a lawyer who had publicly taken a position against the "homosexual agenda," and to hire young lawyers from Ave Maria School of Law, the conservative Catholic school founded by Domino's Pizza billionaire Tom Monaghan.[8]

On May 6, 2008 news agencies report that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was serving warrants on Special Counsel offices in Washington D.C. and in Texas, seized computers and searched Bloch's home. It was alleged that when Bloch's refusal to follow up on cases of discrimination based on sexual orientation was leaked to the press, he retaliated against career employees by creating a field office in Detroit. It was further alleged that he obstructed the investigation by removing material from his computer.[9]

Scott Bloch pleaded guilty and is set to be sentenced on September 8, 2010.[10]

That's Scott Block. An anti-gay Republican who allegedly retaliated against the whistleblowers in his own whistleblower-protection office and got busted. (Sometimes it seems that Republicans aren't just generally perverse, they're exactly perverse; it's that mathematical.)

So what does this have to do with Obama's Justice Dept? I'll keep it simple and give you mainly the links.

(1) Scott Bloch pled guilty on April 27 to one charge of contempt of Congress (for lying). This is a plea-bargain situation. Scott Bloch is already a convicted, guilty [CORRECTION: adjudged guilty pending sentencing] criminal.

(2) In July and again in September, sentencing was delayed:

Bloch's sentencing is on hold in Washington federal district court as a magistrate judge tries to determine whether lying to Congress carries a one-month minimum mandatory jail term. ... Prosecutors are not seeking a jail term for Bloch. ...

If [Judge] Robinson rules there is a one-month mandatory minimum jail sentence, Bloch could move to withdraw his plea agreement before he is sentenced. There’s no guarantee that Robinson would allow it. [my emphasis]

(3) Last month, Judge Robinson ruled that Bloch has to serve a one-month minimum sentence.

(4) Justice Department prosecutors want to help him not go to jail:

Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson last week ruled that the rarely charged crime carries a one-month mandatory minimum sentence. An attorney for Bloch, Winston partner William Sullivan Jr., and Assistant U.S. Attorney Glenn Leon argued together that Robinson had discretion to sentence Bloch to probation.

(5) Bloch's sentencing is set for March 10, just days away.

So, Obama's DOJ is acting in concert with the defense team of a Bush-era criminal, with a serious gay problem, to get him out of jail. bmaz, a practicing lawyer and writer at FDL, has the defining comment:

I have been in and around criminal defense law for nearly 25 years; you know how many times I have seen something like this? Never. In a couple of extreme cases, I have had the government “take no position”, but never actively help a defendant withdraw like they are with Bloch. Why? Because it is the government’s job to prosecute and incarcerate criminals; they simply just do NOT care if it turns out the criminal got a month in jail, whether the criminal was expecting it or not. But it is even worse than that, here the DOJ is actively, and somewhat disingenuously, helping Bloch manufacture a basis for the withdrawal.

And, absent some tangible and material just cause, withdrawal of a plea which has been formally accepted by the court is, under the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, Rule 11, prohibited[.]

Click through; bmaz has more, and more again. Lord knows how this will play out. March 10 will tell whether even 30 days is too much time for a convicted [CORRECTION: adjudged] Bush criminal to serve.

My defining comment: This seems to define the Obama Justice Department as entirely captive to the revolutionary force that faces us all — in the same way that the Republican party is captive, the Third Way Dems are captive, the Southern Baptist Convention is captive, and the courts, including the Supreme Court, are becoming captive.

There seems no other conclusion. Either Attorney General Eric Holder is fully on board with the defense of criminal activity when performed by Movement Conservatives — or the Department of Justice is so filled with Conservative Embeds (for example, Nora Dennehy) as to be unmanageable without a thorough house-cleaning. Either way, the Conservatives are running the Department.

And Obama does not clean house. That makes it his mess.

GP Read the rest of this post...

FOX suspends Gingrich, Santorum over possible presidential runs

About time. Though it is interesting that FOX still feels the need to play the charade of impartiality. Or perhaps FOX does feel the need to be impartial AMONG Republican candidates, lest its partisan gravy train dry out if the wrong Republican man, or woman, wins. Read the rest of this post...

'Recall' effort grows in WI against GOP reps

Good.  And add the governor as well (though a recall effort can't be launched until next January, after he's served a year in office - you can still raise money now).

The Wisconsin Democratic Party has decided to throw its weight behind a nascent grassroots drive to recall a number of GOP state senators, a move that will considerably increase the pressure on them to break with Governor Scott Walker, the Dem party chair confirms to me.

"The proposals and the policies that Republicans are pushing right now are not what they campaigned on, and they're extreme," the party chair, Mike Tate, said in an interview. "Something needs to be done about it now. We're happy to stand with citizens who are filling papers to recall these senators."

Previously, Wisconsin Dems had not publicly supported talk about recalling GOP Senators, in hopes of privately reaching a negotiated solution to the crisis. The Wisconsin Democratic Party's decision to support the recall drives represents a significant ratcheting up of hostilities and in essence signals that all bets are off.

Eight Republican Senators are eligible to be recalled right now, and various groups around Wisconsin are beginning to file papers to make it happen. Tate told me that the party would throw its organization behind such efforts.

Those state Dems seem to be ballsier than our national Dems. Me-likey.  As we noted earlier, nearly half of Wisconsinites would like to see their new GOP governor recalled. Read the rest of this post...

Fed chair Bernanke: GOP spending cuts will cost 'hundreds of thousands of jobs'

And how many jobs will it cost if the White House agrees to half the cuts? We need to be very careful here. It's not like the Republicans have been calling for budget cuts in a vacuum. The President jumped on the budget bandwagon a good year-plus ago. It's going to be difficult, though perhaps not impossible, to try to spin this against the GOP now. Though clearly a "we're all for budget cuts, but they're NUTS" message is the most useful at this point.

“Our sense is that the 60 billion dollars cut spread out in the normal way would reduce growth. But we think given the size it’s one to two tenths [of a percentage point reduction to gross domestic product], about a couple hundred thousand jobs,” he told the House Financial Services Committee. “It’s not trivial.”

Mind you, the Republicans promised to cut $100bn, not just $60bn. So the increase to unemployment, and the cut to GDP, is going to be significantly greater than what Bernanke said. What worries me, again, is how many jobs we lose if we cut $30bn from this year's budget - "only" 100,000?

I'm all for balancing the budget. I'm not sure that even $100bn at this point means squat when we're talking about damaging a very fragile only-quasi recovery. Read the rest of this post...

iPad 2 press conference

Yeah I'm a geek. There's no video, but lots of liveblogging.  Including here from Engadget, and here from Gizmodo. I'm liking the live blog here at Ars Technica. Read the rest of this post...

Nearly half of Wisconsinites want to recall GOP Gov. Walker

UPDATE: Under Wisconsin law, you can only recall state officials one year or more after they were elected, so it's still early for Governor Walker -- but no reason they can't start raising money and organizing now.
__

Sometimes the universe opens up and it rains.

The Rachel Maddow Show has an excellent segment about Scott Walker and the Republican attempt to rebrand their union-busting, Koch-Brothers-rewarding, protest-creating assault on Wisconsin public employees.

The new line? It's not about unions after all. Instead, according to the Republican Governors Assn, it's about "asking state employees to contribute to their own benefits, just like everyone else" (2:16 in the clip).

For those keeping score, by the way, that's the lie David Gregory told on Meet the Press. We dealt with that lie here. (Mmm, is David Gregory a Republican governor, or just one of their spokesmodels?)

The answer, of course, is that, since pensions are deferred compensation under their contract, union members already contribute to their own benefits. To the tune of 100%. Or so.

But pay attention starting at 3:12. Maddow brings out the polling — it's turning hard against Gov. Walker — and then discusses a Walker recall (at 3:45). It's the recall I want to call your attention to. Watch:



Sometimes the universe opens up and pours down the obvious next move: Recall Governor Walker.

That's all Wisconsin Dems have to do. Recall Scott Walker. That's called playing to win. Play the Scott Walker Recall card until (a) he's out, or (b) game over.

No compromises, no quitting. It's how you win; and it's also how you teach them what to expect from you next time. Seriously. Press your advantage. Recall Scott Walker.

Ceci n'est pas une pipe, as Rachel said. And this is not Team Change's soft-glove Democratic party; this Democratic party is your own.

GP Read the rest of this post...

WikiLeaks nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

Assange needs to quit the weird "Jewish conspiracy" nonsense, but WikiLeaks still deserves a lot of credit. The Nobel committee ought to add Anonymous to the list as well. Reuters:

Anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, the Internet and a Russian human rights activist are among a record 241 nominations for the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee said on Tuesday that the 2011 field includes 53 organizations and tops last year's 237 nominees.

Known nominees also include Afghan rights advocate Sima Samar, the European Union, former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya Sardinas, Russian rights group Memorial and its founder Svetlana Gannushkina.

Read the rest of this post...

Issa aide: Reporters asking GOP to conduct witch hunts of Obama so they can cover them

Rep. Darrell Issa, the Chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, fired his press secretary, Kurt Bardella, for sending private emails to New York Times reporter Mark Leibovich:

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), less than two months into his tenure as one of the most powerful committee chairmen on Capitol Hill, fired a close adviser Tuesday after learning that the aide had been sharing e-mails with an author working on a book about Washington's political culture.

This is Issa's first scalp.

Ryan Lizza from the New Yorker interviewed Bardella earlier this year. Bardella was open about what he was doing with Leibovich, including sharing private emails. Lizza's article is fascinating on many levels, but the conclusion is stunning:

This long back and forth was the lead-in to a Bardella quote I used in the piece:

[R]eporters e-mail me saying, “Hey, I’m writing this story on this thing. Do you think you guys might want to investigate it? If so, if you get some documents, can you give them to me?” I’m, like, “You guys are going to write that we’re the ones wanting to do all the investigating, but you guys are literally the ones trying to egg us on to do that!”

To me that last quote was one of the most important things Bardella told me. The rest of it—that offices clash over how to leak info and that bookers and reporters are competitive—is interesting but relatively well known, and not very relevant to a piece about Darrell Issa. But that Bardella accused reporters of offering to collaborate with Issa as he launches what will inevitably be partisan investigations of the Obama Administration seemed jaw-dropping. This is exactly the dysfunctional investigator/reporter dynamic that in the nineteen-nineties fed frenzies over every minor Clinton scandal. In his short-lived career, Bardella was witness to the fact that it was all starting over in 2011, now that there was again a Republican House and a Democratic President. From what I know of what Bardella shared, the beat reporters who cover Issa and engaged in this kind of game with Bardella will be the ones most embarrassed by the e-mails that Leibovich possesses.

Got that? DC-based reporters were encouraging Issa's office to conduct investigations of Obama so they could report on the investigation. That warrants an investigation. Those are the emails I want to see. Read the rest of this post...

WI GOP Sen. more worried about appearance of capitol building than actual democracy

The Republicans always have preferred a show over everything else. The same state senator tried walking through the crowds outside of the capitol building yesterday and was chased by people who yelled "shame." He then tried to re-enter the capital only to discover that the doors were locked. Read the rest of this post...

Bank of England chief blames budget cuts on bankers

Mervyn King is the same person who previously talked about the brain drain the banks had, since the bankers offered so little to society. His argument is exactly what I've been saying about the situation in the US where the Republicans keep blaming others such as public service workers for the economic crisis. That's completely false and everyone knows it. Most people have been quiet though with the extreme actions in Wisconsin, the right may have finally woken that movement. The Guardian:

Mervyn King has risked reopening the bitter argument over blame for the financial crisis by saying that government spending cuts are the fault of the City and expressing surprise there has not been more public anger.

The governor of the Bank of England said that people made unemployed and businesses bankrupted during the crisis had every reason to be resentful and voice their protest. He told the Treasury select committee that the billions spent bailing out the banks and the need for public spending cuts were the fault of the financial services sector.

"The price of this financial crisis is being borne by people who absolutely did not cause it," he said. "Now is the period when the cost is being paid, I'm surprised that the degree of public anger has not been greater than it has."

Read the rest of this post...

UK backs off of no-fly in Libya

The US surely has no military bandwidth at the moment due to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other EU countries have shown more interest in addressing the humanitarian issues first. It's hard not to want to shut down the pro-Gaddafi air force when they're bombing civilians but the hard reality is that it is not likely going to happen. Getting food and supplies into liberated Libya is going to be much easier to organize and is even more critical at the moment.

Aid agencies have expressed concerns over how long food will last inside Libya, as the UN high commissioner for refugees said 140,000 people have now fled the country. Tunisian border guards are struggling to cope with the swelling flood of foreign workers trying to get out.

The change in rhetoric from Britain came as the US made clear it would adopt a more cautious approach and European diplomats expressed surprise at Cameron's rhetoric. Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, giving evidence to the House foreign affairs committee , suggested military intervention by the US and other countries might be counter-productive.

She said the administration was aware that the Libyan opposition was anxious to be seen "as doing this by themselves on behalf of the Libyan people – that there not be outside intervention by any external force. We respect that."

Read the rest of this post...